It took me a long time, but I’ve finished reading all the reviews I wrote in 2004 and made a new phone-friendly webpage of the 2004 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.
I began #Sonderbooks25 at the start of 2025 – celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks by revisiting my old Stand-outs. My original plan was to just go over the reviews of the Stand-outs and choose one book to reread from each year. But, well, it got out of hand. I read all my reviews posted in 2004. They cover Sonderbooks #70 through Sonderbooks #90. This was before I started the blog – or had even heard of blogs – and was posting ezine “issues” every two or three weeks.
And ah! 2004! This was the year before my then-husband started his affair and my life blew apart. I’ve also reread my posts about that year in Project 52 – this post about the start of 2004, and this post about the second half of 2004. There’s a super painful side to those posts, as I was so clueless that my husband was on a path out of our marriage – but on the other hand, it was a wonderful reading year!
I read some fabulous books that year. I’m envious of my past self only working half-time and having significantly more time to read.
I’ve been mostly rereading Stand-outs I can find as eaudiobooks with my library system. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke was the one book I chose to reread for this project, and ended up being a little disappointed, as you can read about in my new review. I also reread Sabriel, by Garth Nix, which was not disappointing, though I haven’t posted the new review yet. And I reread all the Picture Book Stand-outs, and was rather impressed that they lasted well enough that my current library system still has a copy of each one of them.
But oh my goodness, there are so many books I want to reread from that year! Little by little, I’m planning to work a few of them into my future reading, even though this project will move on to my 2005 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.
But I’ve gotten great joy out of reading those old reviews. It reminds me of a great joy of my life – reading – at a time when I was young and happy. I’m so glad I started writing Sonderbooks and can relive what those books meant to me. And let me encourage you to browse those 2004 Stand-outs – you might find some new favorites of your own. For the most part, these ones have stuck with me, and it was a treat to revisit that joyful part of my life.